Bug Description

When using the Polycom Communicator (Model C100S) speakerphone with Hardy, the microphone volume always remains very low. This speaker-phone was purchased primarily for use with Skype, and when trying to adjust the mixer settings in the volume control, it makes no difference. To do this I selected the USB Audio device in the volume control and whacked the volume on the mic up high, but no luck. when doing a Skype test call. the volume of the other end of the call is fine and the volume is excellent, it is literally just the mic volume being too low.

This is sound card issue - when testing recording in Audacity (using /dev/dsp1), the volume remains to be low. I tried to test using ALSA, but had problems accessing the device.

The bug doesn't lie with alsactl or alsamixer[0] but rather what element in the mixer settings/volume control you're adjusting.

[0]You really shouldn't have to use `alsamixer -c0' or `pavucontrol' to adjust the volume, but it seems you have to until we clean up the mess, aka provide a unified way of setting global vs. application/stream volume.

However, it is extremely unintuitive. Both the Gnome sound control panel and alsamixer command-line tool do not help with this problem -- you can set it to 100% in alsamixer and over-amplify in Gnome sound control panel, which does affect the volume, but it is still deathly quiet. I would not mark this bug as Invalid, as there is a user interface issue here if nothing else.